


house of hallways

by hambamthankyoumaam (Random13245)



Series: The Selection AU [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alexander's Backstory, Angst, Changing Tenses, Childhood Memories, Death, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurricanes & Typhoons, Poetic, Reminiscing, Repressed Memories, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 10:16:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10614831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random13245/pseuds/hambamthankyoumaam
Summary: And as it gets dark in this house of hallways/And no corridor leads to the stairs/With still wet black paint on all the windows/We got no clocks cause time don't care here/So tell me your name young noble stranger/And tell me just what we're doing here/Have you painted walls with all the answers/Have you hidden doors with all our fearsCause the soul's rock hard but the heart's trapped underneath/And the weight of it all gets enough just to crush the best out of you and me/But I swear that there's someone who cares here enough to set us free/And if the world don't turn just enough to bring her honest/Then I guess we're better off forgottenThe walls stay too thin in this house of hallways/They let through the echoes and the stares/And they'll bleed bright red with scribbled riddles/Scratched out of their panels by angered air/Cause God knows I've made all my own choices/And if I drown alone it's cause I choose/To spend my time drinking in the stairwells/When we've both got way too much to prove[or: Alex's past][or: shit I'm still pop punk trash ¯\_(ツ)_/¯][or: still can't write consistent tenses]





	

**Author's Note:**

> this ended up a lot longer than intended but here ya go

His memories start at age three. He remembers toddling around outside, he remembers the smell of his mother cooking.

He was three- or at least, he's pretty sure he was three- when he broke his arm. He lived in dirt level poverty in the Caribbean, and medical assistance was nonexistent for him. He remembers his mother scraping together what she could to bandage his arm- nothing was strong enough to be a cast.

For what all they lacked, he'd never felt like he was lacking. He played with other kids who were the same as him, a single parent and the tiniest apartment imaginable. It was his version of normal.

During the day, while playing with a few other kids, he'd been hanging upside down from a rusted monkey-bar perch. The nearest playground to the tiny apartments was precarious, looking back now he sees that, as it was not taken care of and very old. The bar he was hanging from creaked, and before he could react properly, he was falling. He fell straight down onto his left arm, and heard the bone crunching.

He remembers a moment of numbness. A moment of: _what just happened_. Then pain, so so much pain. He remembers screaming, drawing the attention of the other dirt-smeared children. They all gasped at his arm, bent in the wrong direction. One of the older ones took off sprinting to the apartment building to get an adult while the younger ones simply stared in shock and horror.

He remembers being picked up- he's not sure by whom- and carried home. He's not sure if he fell asleep or not but the next thing he remembers is the feeling of his arm painfully being pushed back into place. When he opened his mouth to cry out, he opened his eyes too, and saw the doctor above him. His mother was across the room, biting at her nails. Something she always did when she was nervous. He thinks now that the doctor probably wasn't a real, certified doctor. He wonders what could have happened if the doctor had messed up somehow.

But the scene continues: the doctor packs up and moves to talk to his mother. They speak in hushed tones, but he knows it's about payment. He knows it surer than anything. He knows that food will be scarce for the next month or so, more so than it already was. Instead of their established one meal a day, they'd only have one every other day. And, there wouldn't be the once-a-week homemade meal, they couldn't afford that. It would be small fruits from the market, nothing cooked for awhile.

He blames himself to this day.

* * *

He was five when a man came into their life- their _private_ life. He remembers despising this man, but his mother seemed smitten. He tried to like him, to tolerate him, but to no avail. His manners failed him in the presence of this man- this _stranger_ \- walking through his life. Their apartment felt even smaller with another person around constantly.

* * *

He was five and a half when his mother completely uprooted them from their comfortable small island life to be with this man. He remembers hating her in that moment, he remembers shouting as loud as his malnourished five-year-old frame would allow. This didn't deter his mother, though. They moved from their small completely unheard of island to another, slightly larger, part of the Caribbean.

He tried to hate his new setting as much as he could, but just like with his past home, he was surrounded by kids like him, and fell right into the ocean tides of life there.

Their life seemed to settle for another year. They had enough to get by, and that year saw more homemade meals than he'd ever see again.

* * *

He was seven when the man left. His mother was devastated. He hated seeing her so ruined, knowing the man was fine. The man had simply come to take what he could before he left. He'd clung to his mother, and she to him.

More men would come and go, but they were here and gone so fast their faces were blurred in his memory with the motion of swapping between them.

* * *

He was twelve when his mother died.

Tuberculosis was common, it shouldn't have been a surprise to either of them when it found their tiny home.

The already small dwelling felt even smaller under the heavy weight of sickness in the air. He was sure then, absolutely positive, he would die.

He did what he could, in his frail body, to be strong for his mother. He took care of her when she’d gotten sick and laid with her when he'd caught it too.

He remembers coughing, both of them, and the sound filling the air. He remembers losing weight, as if he had some to spare in the first place. He remembers his mother seemingly wilting before his eyes. He remembers crying, though he's not sure who's tears it was that were shed.

He can still hear the sound of his mother coughing, wheezing in, one last time. He was laying with her, and panicked when she stopped wheezing and coughing and hacking. He pressed his ear to her chest, but heard no telltale heart.

(He learned how to say goodbye.)

* * *

He was thirteen when he came ‘home’ to find his cousin hanging from a noose.

He couldn't remember exactly how long he'd been living with the cousin, but now he was living with his cousin’s corpse. And he lived like that for… a month? He can't seem to remember, but he supposes he must've blocked out much memory of that darker period of his life. (He knew how to say goodbye.)

It took a month for anyone to really notice- a thirteen year old living alone, and not just alone, but with a body still hanging from the ceiling in the attic. He tried to ignore the air of death that settled upon what was his largest living arrangement.

He went to live with his mother's ex-landlord.

* * *

He was fourteen when he got his first real job. Sure, growing up in poverty he worked odd jobs here and there to help scrape together food money, but nothing official. Until now, at least.

He worked as a clerk for his mother's landlord. He remembers sitting for hours and hours with an accounting book and a pen and teaching himself more complicated maths. Education was the only thing scarcer than food, so he had to rely on his own mind to figure things out. He remembers long hours and longer headaches, the smell of ink- particularly strong when a pen would burst- and the scratching of the pen tip on paper.

He strangely enjoyed his job, it gave him a sense of purpose, something he'd been unknowingly looking for his entire life.

* * *

He was fifteen when a hurricane tore up the entire Caribbean.

He remembers the wind, the way it pounded on his ears relentlessly. He remembers the sound of people screaming, people dying, people mourning. He remembers the way entire buildings- people’s _homes_ \- were lifted by the storm and carried maybe only a few miles before being smashed into the ground or something else flying in the wind.

He remembers the rain, the absolute downpour, the flooding, more screaming, people drowning. The _sounds_ of death. The thunderclaps and lightning bursts. The whistling sky, the yellowed clouds.

It couldn't have lasted more than an hour, maybe two, but it was the longest hour of his life. Time seemed to stretch out its long arms, as if the world had just awoken and needed to stretch.

In a moment of destruction, a lifetime of tragedy.

In the rubble, the death and destruction, he wrote about it. He helped clean up, of course, and humanitarian aide was sent, too, but that only goes so far. Pity from the upper class only fixed so much. So when he had the time, he wrote. Countless essays, the papers strewn about his room, disorganized and yet so detailed.

He wrote of the sounds, the sights, and feelings. He wrote about how much he expected to be swept away with the hurricane, drowned in the water, smashed by debris. He never was, obviously, but he expressed how much he had expected it. How he'd come to accept it, maybe even wish for it. After seeing the destruction, he'd almost _wanted_ to die, so he didn't have to live with the aftermath.

He didn't expect anyone to see them, but the landlord’s son notices the papers. One day, he comes to find his room stripped of its usual chaotic wallpaper of essays. The landlord’s son had taken them, shown his father. His father had taken them and shown the community. The community rallied behind his writing.

_This kid is too smart to be stuck here._

So they passed around a plate, like the kind he'd seen before in churches, collection plates. Everyone chipped in, placed at the very least a penny, no one didn't have something they wanted to give. With the collected money, and the honor of the town, he bought a plane ticket to the mainland.

* * *

He's sixteen when he meets the Schuylers. The middle sister takes a particular liking to him, a sort of motherly role almost. Almost, because he won't let her in that far, he can't.

She tries to get him to eat, tries to help his poor frame, but his pride makes him resent it, refuse it. He tried to push her away along with it, he felt like he was dragging down her status. She was rich, well-known, he was poor and the only place people knew his name was back in the Caribbean.

She'd helped him adjust to the caste system, it wasn't yet in place in the Caribbean, and he was placed as a Seven. She told him he could climb the castes, but with great difficulty.

Within three months he moved up a caste and landed in Six. At this level he was practically back to where he and his mother had been in the Caribbean. He was still struggling to get by, especially in comparison to other Sixes, who had large families and several small sources of income.

But he managed.

* * *

He was about sixteen and a half- he wasn't entirely sure, he'd lost track of his birthday after his mother had died- when he was Selected.


End file.
